GARDEN NEWS 23rd February, 2010:

What a horrible winter!  We have been shivering with 3 lots of snow,  night temperatures down to minus 3, gale force winds and lots of rain!  This irises are loving it!  But we may have lost a lot of our pelargonium collection.

Looks like Sping may be coming at last and we are tidying up the garden ready to open this year on Sunday, 28th March.   It is so exciting to see the iris fans shooting up strong, fresh green triangles,  coming alive again after the winter.

We planted more than 2000 tulips in October, so expecting a fantastic display of spring bulbs in early April, the dwarf iris and arilbred iris will be out too and we hope you will be able to visit.

It has been a busy autumn/ winter.  We made our first trip to South Africa in November visiting gardens and discovering new plants.  The Drakensberg Mountains were wonderful, see the photo below of the Watsonias in bloom.  Back home, we have planted a new rose garden around an old olive tree and we are clearing the top of the hill to make more room for our ever expanding collection of irises.  The latest count shows that we have more than 300 different tall bearded, plus historicals, intermediates, dwarfs, louisianas, spurias, californian pacific, unguicularis AND our own hybrid seedlings, some of which should flower this spring!  Too many Nick keeps saying!

We look forward to being able to share the garden with you this spring, please come and enjoy,

 Christine and Nick